WSJ. Magazine’s 1st Annual Innovator of the Year Awards
WSJ. Magazine recently announced its inaugural Innovator of the Year Awards, honoring the most creative, disruptive, and influential individuals in the world today. In conjunction with the November issue of WSJ., seven winners will be honored at a dinner on Thursday, October 27, at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. The November issue of WSJ. will hit newsstands on Saturday, October 29, as part of WSJ Weekend.
The winners of the 2011 WSJ. Magazine’s Innovator of the Year Awards are: Ai Weiwei (Art); Katie Grand (Fashion); Elon Musk (Technology); Bjarke Ingels (Architecture); Steve Ells (Food); Joris Laarman (Design); and The Giving Pledge, founded by Warren Buffet and Bill Gates (Philanthropy). More information on the awards after the break.
Closing Reception: Sacred Spaces in Profane Buildings
Storefront for Art and Architecture will host a “closing ceremony” for the exhibition, Sacred Spaces in Profane Buildings, an exhibition by Matilde Cassani that explores secret, sacred territory throughout New York, on November 5, 2011 at 5pm. The ceremony will include discussion with local clergy on the condition of religion in the city of New York, focusing on the religious spaces that are built in non-traditional places to worship. The reception is free and open to the public. For more information, visit here.
MPD Office / StudioLAB
Architects: StudioLAB, LLC
Location: Meat Packing District, New York City, NY, USA
Design Team: Matthew Miller, Ryan Ho
Contractor: D&D1 Corp.
Project Year: 2011
Project Area: 3,000 sqf
Photographs: Courtesy of StudioLAB
Sundaram Tagore Gallery / Katz Architecture
Architect: Katz Architecture
Location: 547 West 27th Street, New York City, New York, USA
MEP Engineer: Lilker Associates
Schematic Design: Charles Hemminger Associates
Lighting: Lighting Collaborative
Expediting: William Vitacco Associates
Custom Concrete: The Concrete Impressionist
Photographs: Julian Olivas of Air-to-Ground Photography
200 Eleventh Avenue / Selldorf Architects
Architect: Selldorf Architects
Location: New York, New York, USA
Project Area: 61,000 gsf
Project Year: 2010
Photographer: David Sundberg | Esto
Urban Planning Visionaries Discuss ‘Design in New York City’
The MAS Summit for New York City, which occurs at 9:15am on October 14th, will bring together four icons of urban planning, design and architecture to explore today’s challenges and opportunities in creating a well-planned and well-designed city.
Delivering keynote speeches will be Amanda M. Burden, FAICP, an urban planner and civic activist, who serves as the New York City Planning Commissioner and Chair of the New York City Planning Commission, and Witold Rybczynski best-selling author, Martin and Margy Meyerson Professor of Urbanism at the University of Pennsylvania and architecture critic at Slate. More information on the event after the break.
Kissing vs Komplex: The relations between art and architecture
On October 18th, starting at 7pm, Storefront for Art and Architecture presents Kissing vs Komplex, a Productive Disagreement Series Event with Sylvia Lavin and Hal Foster on conversation about contemporary relations between art and architecture, and the forces that bring them together.
For more information on the event, visit their website here.
Architecture for Free?!
Architecture, in its most idealistic sense, is always geared towards the construction of the public good. Thus, the notion of architecture pro bono appears as a redundant affirmation. However, the real meaning lying behind the beautiful latinism of pro bono, is the contemporary capitalist counterpart and less exotic “for free” and more precisely, for free for those who are unable to afford it.
Architecture for Free!?, put on by Storefront for Art and Architecture on October 14th, aims to expose what is that that architecture offers pro bono and explore the possibilities lying within this rampant practice in order to see how architecture might be able to find new opportunities for reinvention and territories of exploration. For more information, please visit their website here.
Architectural League of New York: Fall 2011 Lecture Series
The Architectural League of New York recently announced its Fall 2011 Lecture Series. Jeanne Gang, recently awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant, will give the annual Ulrich Franzen Lecture on Architecture and the Environment, delivered by an international figure whose work has significant implications for understanding and reconceiving the relationship between architecture and the environment. Past Franzen lectures have been delivered by Renzo Piano, Shigeru Ban, and Werner Sobek.
The League’s Current Work series annually presents prominent architects and designers, who help to shape current architectural discourse with their work and ideas. This year’s series includes Michael Van Valkenburgh, designer of the recently opened Brooklyn Bridge Park; Francine Houben of the Dutch firm Mecanoo; Jesse Reiser and Nanako Umemoto, the recent winners of the major international competition to design the Kaohsiung Port Terminal; Michael Maltzan of Los Angeles; and Bernard Khoury of Beirut. More information on the lecture series after the break.
WTC: Street Installation and Exhibition
WTC: Street Installation and Exhibition is a 4×28 foot montage comprised of closeups of the facades of the former Twin Towers- located on East 4th Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue. There will also be nine accompanying prints exhibited in the FAB Cafe across the street.
Opening reception is Wednesday, September 28th from 7-9pm, FAB Cafe 75 East 4th Street.
Museum Closure Exposes Financial Risk of Signature Architecture
NEW YORK–Although the American Folk Art Museum has avoided dissolution thanks to a cash infusion from trustees and the Ford Foundation, the institution’s ongoing financial troubles raise difficult questions about the relationship between signature architecture and cultural capital.
‘Manifesto Series 06: Finding Formless’ Event
Storefront for Art and Architecture is pleased to present Manifesto Series 06: Finding Formless curated by Julian Rose and Garrett Ricciardi [principles of formlessfinder] on Friday, September 23rd, 2011 from 6:30 to 9pm.
Impulses toward the formless, alternately understood as struggles to escape form as a manifestation of various norms and constraints, are as old as architecture itself. But the formless is also increasingly in the air today, whether explicitly as in discussions of the “formless” quality of the city, or implicitly in talk of atmospheric buildings, randomized structures, and the dematerialization (or increased mediation) of architecture. No doubt part of its appeal lies in the fact that the formless is frequently found at the intersections between architecture and other fields, those intriguing moments when architecture unravels and can perhaps be woven into other practices, from art to ecology or engineering. Nevertheless, the formless has not yet been theorized rigorously in architecture. More information on the event after the break.
Arvo Pärt and Snøhetta Collaborate for Guggenheim Exhibition in Lower Manhattan
The second iteration of stillspotting nyc–a two-year multidisciplinary project that takes the Guggenheim’s programming into the streets of New York City–features Estonian composer Arvo Pärt and U.S. and Norway–based architecture firm Snøhetta in collaboration on urban soundscapes around Lower Manhattan. To a Great City, the Manhattan edition of stillspotting nyc, will be open to the public for two extended weekends on September 15–18 and 22–25, 2011. The installations explore the relationship between space and sound.
The architects have selected, and sometimes altered, urban spaces embodying the concept of a central tone, extending the perception of sound in the realm of space. Visitors will experience the confluence of music and architecture at five locations that quietly celebrate the city, ten years after September 11th. Around the periphery of Ground Zero, “participants may encounter a green labyrinth created by The Battery Conservancy, reflect in an underground chamber at Governors Island National Monument, and enter otherwise inaccessible spaces in landmark skyscrapers.” Participants can visit spaces multiple times at their leisure to understand how their perception changes based on circumstances such as time, stress, appetite, and sleep.
Exhibition: stillspotting nyc: manhattan (To a Great City by Arvo Pärt and Snøhetta)
Venue: Five locations, starting at Castle Clinton National Monument in Battery Park, across from 17 Battery Place, New York, NY
Dates: September 15–18 and 22–25, 2011
Read the press release here: http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/press-room/releases/4219-stillspottingmanhattan
10 Up and Coming Urban Neighborhoods
USA Today has put together a list of city neighborhoods which are satiated with activity, areas which offer a “great slice of urban life.” These districts trend from the urban vicinity to its very core, each in itself exemplifying the revitalization of the American city. The list includes regions which have been influenced by deliberate urban revitalization projects, such as High Line Park in Chelsea; while other neighborhoods have experienced an influx of a younger populace which has contributed to its growth, such as Lawrenceville in Pittsburgh.
See the 10 Up and Coming Urban Neighborhoods after the break.
GSAPP Columbia University Events
Columbia University’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation recently shared with us their event schedule for Fall 2011. The event series will run from September 9th to November 29th and start at 6:30pm in Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall, unless otherwise noted. The events are free and open to the public. More information on the events after the break.
‘Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment’ Exhibition
Pritzker Prize-winner Kevin Roche is one of America’s most influential and prolific architects, acclaimed for his skillful integration of man-made and natural environments. Drawing on material originally presented at the Yale School of Architecture, Kevin Roche: Architecture as Environment, which runs from September 27nd-January 22nd, has been expanded to highlight Roche’s contributions to the fabric of New York City, including the Ford Foundation building and more than four decades of master planning, design, renovations, and new additions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The exhibition features original drawings, models, photographs, and ephemera documenting Roche’s career, along with extensive video presentations of projects and interviews with the architect.
For more information on the event, visit their website here.
‘What Happens to a Design Deferred?’ Event
The ‘What happens to a design deferred?’ event, hosted by Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), will be a presentation of work by Brooklyn-based architecture firm and 2011 MoMA PS1 Young Architect Program winners Interboro Partners by Tobias Armborst, Daniel D’Oca, and Georgeen Theodore, followed by a live interview for Young Architects Program’s oral history project by Th—ey partners Christopher Barley and Troy Therrien.
The event takes place on September 19th from 6:30pm to 8:30pm at Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP), Wood Auditorium, Avery Hall and is free to the public.
For more information, please visit their website here.
Drake Hotel Tower / Macklowe + CIM + RVA
Earlier in the week, we shared a video of Cook+Fox’s Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park. Recently, we’ve heard some talk of a new skyscraper that may be making an appearance in the skyline. Situated on the site of the former Drake Hotel at the corner of 57th Street and Park Avenue, the project is the work of California developer CIM, Harry Macklowe and Rafael Viñoly [although it is not designed by RVA]. Macklowe demolished the old hotel and the zoning allows new development to surpass a soaring 1,000 feet! Although all is speculative, Curbed.com reported that the tower may reach 1,420 feet! At that height, the tower will become the second tallest in the city – passing the Empire State and the Bank of America building – and, get this, it will even beat the height of One World Trade [if you don’t count the 400 ft antenna]! Remember all the controversy surrounding Nouvel’s Torre Verre for Midtown? We wonder what this project will stir up with its bland aesthetics and its crazy height. Just to give you an idea of the project, we found these images on Curbed.com and as the site reports, “WNY user STR did some modeling of the Vinoly structure, and another commenter credits the drawings as ‘not official renderings, just rough sketches based on descriptions from some people who have been privy to the design process.’ ” What do you think of the plans for the new Drake Hotel site?
More renderings after the break.
The Bank of America Tower / Cook + Fox
There is a lot of attention being paid to the New York skyline these days – and rightly so, as the Freedom Tower rises about 1 story a week. Yet, a little farther up the Island, an elegant faceted tower has caught our attention since its completion in 2008. Designed by New York-based Cook + Fox, the conceptualization behind the sleek volume, which rises gracefully from its base at One Bryant Park, is rooted in ideas of biophilia – the innate relationship between nature and man. Constructed to respectively take its spot as the second tallest building in NYC [soon to be the third after the Freedom Tower and the Empire State Building], the sustainable tower marks the first LEED Platinum commercial skyscraper in the world. Check out this short click featuring Principal Richard Cook as he offers a deeper explaination of how biophilia informed not only the formal attitude of the architecture, but also shaped the experiences and atmosphere of this 2,200,000 sqf skyscraper.
Oyster-Tecture and the Gowanus Canal
The Gowanus Canal is one of America’s most polluted waterways, and its location in the New York Harbor made it one of the many places that were effected by flooding as a result of Hurricane Irene. If that isn’t enough to think about, last year the EPA declared the Gowanus Canal as a Superfund site, “As a result of years of discharges, storm water runoff, sewer outflows and industrial pollutants, the Gowanus Canal has become one of the nation’s most extensively contaminated water bodies. Contaminants include PCBs, coal tar wastes, heavy metals and volatile organics. The contamination poses a threat to the nearby residents who use the canal for fishing and recreation.”
Rising Currents, an exhibit that was featured at the MoMA just last year, was a cohesive showcase of five projects tackling the lingering truth that within a few years, the waterfront of the New York harbor will drastically change. We highlighted Zone 0 earlier this week, comprised of ARO and dlandstudio, they specifically took a look at the lower Manhattan landscape, proposing to develop a new soft and hard infrastructure solution paved with a mesh of cast concrete and engineered soil and salt tolerant plants.
Zone 4, or Oyster-Tecture by Kate Orff, dealt directly with the highly polluted Gowanus Canal. We shared with you Orff’s TEDTalk on Oyster-Tecture back in Februrary, and feel like it is a subject worth revisiting. Eastern oysters being her focus, she shares how the oyster can improve water quality as a natural bio filter. Blending urbanism and ecology she proposes an oyster reef for the Gowanus Canal and Governors Island, an accessible idea that can be implemented immediately. A further description about Zone 4 Oyster-Tecture following the break.
Video: New York City Visualized Through Smart Shoes
Brooklyn based interaction designer Cooper Smith has created an amazing series of videos documenting pedestrian travel within Manhattan. By tracking the paths of 1000 Nike Plus (Nike’s new smart running shoe) runs, he was able to produce and distill a wide variety of data. The results are quite elegant in terms of graphics, and offer insight into the patterns of urban travel. For more videos visit Cooper’s website.
